Why Use An External vs. Internal HDD

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S

Steve LeBlanc

Mac Daddy DJ
Aug 19, 2006
6,829
192
65
Fredericton, NB
www.frederictonweddingdj.com
Rob - I'm glad it worked out...I trust you understand why I kept harping about the importance of a 2nd laptop; if you're using external drives, you should bring a second.

I do not use externals as my primary source...i find them to be too flaky.....put all your music on the internal....

The suue here isn't the pc...equipment fails....It's the lack of a back up plan in place....
 
Steve LeBlanc said:
Rob - I'm glad it worked out...I trust you understand why I kept harping about the importance of a 2nd laptop; if you're using external drives, you should bring a second.

I do not use externals as my primary source...i find them to be too flaky.....put all your music on the internal....

The suue here isn't the pc...equipment fails....It's the lack of a back up plan in place....
Click to expand...

Well fortunately things worked out.... my ex was close to the house and had got there in time should I have had to go to plan B.. but as luck would have it I only had to play one song off my CD deck and was able to tranition back to my original configuration with what appears to be minor data loss.....

I have always had two computers just not two laptops... I will be keeping the desk top in the van from now on along with a mirrored external hdd for my music library.

Puting my music on the local drive is not a good idea and not just from a space point of view... mostly due to performance concerns with the higher access needs of running the OP System and then having to play music or video to.... it's really best to have it on an external drive....

I will be investing in a new drive to replace my existing gig drive which will then become my backup drive... what I will get since this laptop has it.. is an eSATA drive... with over 4x the access speed via the eSATA bus vs. standard 2.0 USB.
 
I agree with Steve.
Externals are bad idea. What will happen if you drop one?

My last concern is lappy speed. I was playing on pentium III, 800 Mhz with Traktor a few years ago. :sqeek: Never had any problems.

I had a small DMX problem yesterday - my scanners would freeze after 2-3 minutes.. Quickly switching to my 3rd lapy (netbook) gave me a big relief :sqerr:
Otherwise I would be ocuppied with things I don't need to worry about.
 
Sounds like one of my gigs from hell before, although, I didn't play so nice. Just kept 'my side' of the building rocking and worried about 'my room'. Mgr on duty came up and threatened to pull the plug. I said that'd be fine with me, would you like to make that known the bride-n-groom and refund their money because of your lack of proper planning? Said a few other comments as well, all in good taste and calm tone of voice. He just turned around and walked off, gave me a few dirty looks while I was tearing down, so we again had another discussion in which he admitted he f'd up and apologized to me. I then told him if wouldn't have been such as ass-bag when he first approached me, I would have been more than happy to work with him. To this day, we still laugh about the 'ass-bag' comment and usually have a drink at the bar after an event.

Anyways, sorry about the ramble.....Rob, I'm not a big fan of externals. I only use two for backup purposes and utilize the internal for live shows. I don't understand your thoughts about why an external is better. Not sure if you want to discuss that in this thread or not, but from what I have learned, they add more stress to a system vs. less.
 
This probably should be split to a new topic "Internal vs External Music Storage" or some such title in the Computer DJ forum...

1. By having my data on an external drive I can easily and quickly swap out drives even while in the middle of a show. (try that with an internal lappy drive, I dare ya!)

2. Less stress on the drive.... since the System drive will be constantly accessed in the operation of whatever programs are running. Having the files on an external drive reduces access rates and stress on the system drive. (This is a minute consideration with todays technologies and hyperthreading and whatnot... but back when I started out it was a consideration).

3. Storage size..... Say my internal lappy drive is only 250GB, which it is, and I've got well over 500GB of music and karaoke... are you getting the picture? What's even worse than storing it on the internal drive is haveing to split it between an internal and external drive...

4. I just don't wanna store it on my internal drive and you can't make me.... :yoTongue:

5. If the lappy explodes and you don't have your backup external drive, but do have another lappy... then what are you going to do... if ya's had the external I know what I would have done... ;)
 
By all means, do what is most comfortable. I started out using an external, thinking some of the same things that you mention, but since have placed my gig library onto my internal for the convenience of not carrying another piece of gear.

My backup is cd-based, with many 'best of' compilations, until I get the second lappy which will be a back-up, along with running my light show. (Did you hear that Santa!)
 
Randy A said:
By all means, do what is most comfortable. I started out using an external, thinking some of the same things that you mention, but since have placed my gig library onto my internal for the convenience of not carrying another piece of gear.

My backup is cd-based, with many 'best of' compilations, until I get the second lappy which will be a back-up, along with running my light show. (Did you hear that Santa!)
Click to expand...


Oh trust me on this.... I'll be buying blank CDs and making hard copies of my digital purchases and then I will also have CD cases in my Van too... I did not use to even carry my CDG's for the longest time due to available space in my Buick but now I don't have any excuse not to...

I've got plenty of CD sleeves and books no reason not to carry them but I will be getting a CD Case like I have for my karaoke discs very soon.

I still prefer the external route if for no other reason than expandablity and portability from one system to the next.
 
I may even just burn my entire library to CD and keep my originals at home.... and do them by Genre sorted by either Artist or Song title just not for sure which sorting method will work best for me if I had to thumb through CDs....

This just gives me another good reason to pick up a simple 2 channel mixer like an entry level Denon (sp?)
 
jokerswild said:
This probably should be split to a new topic "Internal vs External Music Storage" or some such title in the Computer DJ forum...

1. By having my data on an external drive I can easily and quickly swap out drives even while in the middle of a show. (try that with an internal lappy drive, I dare ya!)

2. Less stress on the drive.... since the System drive will be constantly accessed in the operation of whatever programs are running. Having the files on an external drive reduces access rates and stress on the system drive. (This is a minute consideration with todays technologies and hyperthreading and whatnot... but back when I started out it was a consideration).

3. Storage size..... Say my internal lappy drive is only 250GB, which it is, and I've got well over 500GB of music and karaoke... are you getting the picture? What's even worse than storing it on the internal drive is haveing to split it between an internal and external drive...

4. I just don't wanna store it on my internal drive and you can't make me.... :yoTongue:

5. If the lappy explodes and you don't have your backup external drive, but do have another lappy... then what are you going to do... if ya's had the external I know what I would have done... ;)
Click to expand...


In my case, I would always use an internal over an external (although keeping the external plugged in for a backup).

Not only are externals extremely slow, but they are prone to disconnection at all the wrong moments. If you have a loose fitting USB port, even a little bump of the computer can cause a temporary disconnect. Then Windows has to reconnect. Once Windows reconnects, it sends out a system wide device reconnect message (which your playback software should handle). That message does not always get sent though (or gets removed by another process before it reaches your software). That means your software may no longer see the drive, and needs to be restarted... :sqerr:

The externals also have to compete for bandwidth, with whatever else shares that particular buss -- making them even slower then they were to start with.

There's no extra stress on your internal drive -- it is doing it's thing anyway, and if properly maintained and defragged, will be umpteen times faster than the external.


The most flexible, and robust configuration I've found, after many years of testing, is to keep all your songs on your external (of which you should have a couple mirror copies), and put your core library of songs on the internal, which you will use for everyday play. Any decent lappy drive these days, can hold a few thousand tracks (usually a lot more than that), which make up the majority of songs you will play at any given event. You can always search your external for the odd request (at least with my software you can) :)

I have tested this stuff 365 days a year, for about 10 years -- and that is hands down, the most reliable method you can use, and will result in any program being more robust. It also takes very little work to maintain that core library on the internal (as long as you keep up with it).
 
Rob - it appears that you are going to do what you think is right, despite what others say....I didn't want to answer your original post with I told you so....but I told you so....

You had no back up plan in place...ands it almost impacted the wedding....fortunately it did work out......although it almost didn't.

You joke....but this could have been a disaster.....

We constantly harp about being pro's.......we now need to "walk the walk"
 
jokerswild said:
I may even just burn my entire library to CD and keep my originals at home.... and do them by Genre sorted by either Artist or Song title just not for sure which sorting method will work best for me if I had to thumb through CDs....

This just gives me another good reason to pick up a simple 2 channel mixer like an entry level Denon (sp?)
Click to expand...

Instead of picking up another mixer, pick up a 2nd laptop and just put the music on the internal drive.
 
Steve LeBlanc said:
Rob - it appears that you are going to do what you think is right, despite what others say....I didn't want to answer your original post with I told you so....but I told you so....

You had no back up plan in place...ands it almost impacted the wedding....fortunately it did work out......although it almost didn't.

You joke....but this could have been a disaster.....

We constantly harp about being pro's.......we now need to "walk the walk"
Click to expand...

My only failing point was not having my spare hdd with me. Having a second PC in this situation would not have solved the problem if the music was still on the external drive.

I do have two PC's I have always had 2 PCs and I have always had 2 external drives.... my backups were in place I just left them at home this time. My bad.

As they say "shinola happens"

As for having my music on the internal hdd I don't know about you guys but even if I just put the music there and not my karaoke at this time it would fit... but, I am constantly expanding my library with new music... eventually I will run out of space on the laptop... then what?
 
Rob - That's why everyone is telling you to put it on the internal drive


What would happen if your one laptop crashes.....having a desktop in the van isn't going to help you. You need redundant seamless back up.

As far as the internal; all of my music fits on a 160 gig drive (12000 songs).....you can get 750 gig laptop drives. You need to seriously look at what you're bringing to a gig music wise if you can't fit them on internal drives......put you karaoke on external drives; use those when needed...
 
Ugh!

Ok ok... Uncle! You guys win.... Internal is better than external.... whatever...:sqrolleyes: I'm still not going to change until I can put it all on an internal. If I can have two drives in my laptop or laptops then that is the only way I'll even consder having all my music on the internal drive.... no way do I want to load up a single hdd only to have to replace it when it's full with another drive..... if I were to store it on an internal drive that drive would have to be a dedicated storage drive and not the OS drive.
 
jokerswild said:
As for having my music on the internal hdd I don't know about you guys but even if I just put the music there and not my karaoke at this time it would fit... but, I am constantly expanding my library with new music... eventually I will run out of space on the laptop... then what?
Click to expand...

Yer missing the point of "core" library Rob. Core does not mean all your music, it means the songs you are most likely to play at any given event. Statistically speaking, you will play mostly the same songs at any given event, in any given time period (let's say the month of November).

I've found over the years, that having a couple thousand tracks, will generally cover 99% of the songs I will play at an event. Again, the odd requests can be pulled off the external, without putting unneeded overhead on the computer, and the software.

Other than the core library, you can also create a separate folder on the internal, where you can rotate in and out, the top 40 or so at the given time.
 
I like that idea of the main music on the laptops internal drive. Rick could it be that I use external drives as to why Rockit Freezes every once in awhile.

Also how hard is it to put a larger drive in a lappy? Mine is only 80 gigs and would like at least 250.
 
How do you determine what should be in a "Core" library and what's not?

I have neither the time nor paitients to try and decide that. Even if I did, there would still be a need to carry and have an external plugged in. Thereby negating any gain of having the music on an internal drive.

And round and round we go.
 
MADNESS said:
I like that idea of the main music on the laptops internal drive. Rick could it be that I use external drives as to why Rockit Freezes every once in awhile.

Also how hard is it to put a larger drive in a lappy? Mine is only 80 gigs and would like at least 250.
Click to expand...

Yes to your first question -- mine does it all the time, when the drives spin down -- Rockit has to wait for it to spin back up, before it can access the song.

Easy :)


jokerswild said:
How do you determine what should be in a "Core" library and what's not?

I have neither the time nor paitients to try and decide that. Even if I did, there would still be a need to carry and have an external plugged in. Thereby negating any gain of having the music on an internal drive.

And round and round we go.
Click to expand...

You determine it based upon your experience Rob... After 35 some years in this business, I know what I'm going to play at a gig (with the exception of an odd request). I don't always know what order I might play them in, but I do know what works, and what doesn't.

Go through your song lists over the last 6 months, and you will note a surprising similarity ;)


And no, you are only using the external as a backup/odd request drive, so that is what will make everything faster. Your software will not be accessing that drive on a regular basis :)
 
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